ARC Grant Information

The following information is needed for ARDC Grants:

Who is your organization and what is its mission?

We are the Amateur Radio Club at UCF, the collegiate amateur radio club of the University of Central Florida. Our mission is to get as many people licensed and on the amateur bands as possible.

Why do you want to do this project?

Our goal with this project is to provide students at the University of Central Florida and the surrounding public with the opportunity to use a minimal-compromise amateur radio station for their HF, VHF, and UHF interests. While the cost of entry into the amateur radio hobby has gone down, many important skills can't be effectively practiced until an individual has invested in premium equipment. Skills like operating a rotor and beam antenna, effectively using digital and analogue filters, sending CW with semi-automatic keys, SSB and weak-signal VHF/UHF, and remote radio operation remain reserved for clubs and individuals who have made significant investments in their stations. Due to the majority of our members being university students, time on the air, contest participation, and usage of unique modes remain heavily scarce due to compromised living and financial situations. We anticipate the introduction of high-quality equipment and remote access will permit many of our members to more efficiently develop their skills and make use of the amateur radio service.

We also want our club to be equipped with all the tools necessary to effectively provide an environment where members studying for their different license exams will be able to have hands-on experience with what they are learning about. One of the most important motivating factors for studying for an amateur license is knowing what you gain after acquiring the license. The acquisition of new station equipment will enable us to create educational videos and materials on how to use and install tools such as rotors, CW keyers, digital interfaces, and various digital and analog receive filters effectively.

What is your project plan?

We plan to implement three new stations to educate youth hams on field, contest, remote, CW, and emergency radio operation. These new stations will complement our existing VHF/UHF station and UHF repeater. In addition to the three new stations, we plan to resolve existing issues with our current HF setup. Currently, we are facing issues with water intrusion in our coax runs, high noise levels from HVAC systems, lack of digital-mode interfacing, no CW infrastructure, obsolete HF radio equipment, a limiting soldering station, and insufficient materials to build a remote station. Finally, most importantly, we plan to design a large series of brief educational and entertaining videos in order to demonstrate proper usage of all of the equipment we obtain. Listed are abstract definitions of the three stations we plan to build, along with a brief summary of our educational project.

Our first station will be designated for use as an HF contesting and "Get on the Air" base station. One important component of this station will be a desktop computer running GNU/Linux with various contest and general-purpose operating tools installed. With the rising popularity of digital modes for DXing, general operation, and contesting, we need to ensure operators have easy access to a capable station so they can explore and get on the air with more than just SSB and CW. We already began work equipping a computer with such software. The second tool will be a Winkeyer compatible CW keyer. Having a capable keyer will provide new CW operators the ability to practice with training software and learn how to send CW using macros. Our final main goal is to attach this HF rig to a directional antenna with a remote rotor. Directional antennas do much more than win contests, they provide an excellent way to explore and demonstrate radio propagation.

Our second station will be a field kit designed specifically for quick deployment in areas that are not our shack. The station will be used for POTA activation, public operation, and for testing new antenna designs and builds. One important component of this setup will be ensuring it is fully capable of digital operation. Since this station will be designed for field usage, we have planned a case layout which is capable of storing both the rig and everything required to get on the air in a single container. We would also add a small dummy load to this kit. The purpose of the dummy load would be to prevent the radio from accidentally transmitting a 100w carrier while on display during indoor tabling events.

Our third station will be designed exclusively for remote operation. As a university, many of our members are living in apartments and dorms. The remote station will provide our members, and local hams, with a way to operate on a non-compromised HF setup during all hours of the day. Remote operation has revolutionized amateur radio to the point where contesting stations like NJ4P exclusively rely on remote operation. As such, having a remote station ourselves will allow us to properly educate ourselves and many others on how to properly take advantage of this relatively new style of operation.

All of these stations will serve a larger purpose outside of operation. They will be used by our club to make a series of video tutorials and written guides. These materials will explain how to use the new tools we are adding to our shack, along with how to use any accompanying "free and open source" software. The goal with these videos will be to provide an entertaining "short-form" style guide on using common gear hams may encounter. A few topics we will implement are: getting wire antennas in trees, using macro-assisted CW sending, using an external autotuner, rotor positioning for various propagation conditions, building cables to enable the use of digital modes, and using digital mode software like FLDigi. Each video will contain a brief introduction, overview of equipment used, overview of theory, and demonstration. In addition, we will document and publish the process of installing and setting up all of this equipment and. We anticipate these videos will greatly increase the efficiency of K4UCF, and many other clubs', field operations and routine maintenance. All videos and supporting documentation will be published to accessible platforms and licensed under an appropriate open access license, CC BY unless objected to by ARDC.

Describe your outreach plan

We have three main outreach avenues that we will focus on.

First, we will focus on local community involvement and presence. We have observed the best way to get the attention of new prospective hams is to be out in public and have a presence in community events. Parks on the Air, ARRL Field Day, university-sponsored events, and simply using the radio in public has allowed our club to introduce many new people to amateur radio. We will not stray from this path, which has been so successful, and believe the inclusion of new equipment from the grant will greatly increase the efficiency and quality of our community involvement by providing our members with a quick and easy portable station equipped with necessary educational material for visitors. Youth recruitment is a particular interest to our club as we are a majority youth hams. We have been given the opportunity in the past to speak to K-12 students about what amateur radio is all about. During K-12 recruitment, in addition to the many niches of amateur radio, we have noticed digital modes and radio telemetry have captured the interest of many young operators and have developed and planned development of presentations specifically targeting these areas to better tailor our recruitment for prospective youth hams. To complement our mission to educate youth hams, we also work with W5YI to provide free amateur radio license exams to current students, so they can apply what we teach them.

Second, we will focus on our involvement on the air. Participation on the bands is arguably one of the most important objectives of a radio club. Contests, activations, and just talking on the radio are helpful not only for maintaining our access to the amateur bands, but also getting K4UCF's name in the hands of other operators. We have had multiple members discover our club through our UHF nets and HF sessions. One unique plan we have for our on-the-air outreach is the usage of unique digital modes. Using experimental or niche digital modes like FT2, JS8Call, Freedv, and Hellschreiber requires at least two operators, and K4UCF would like to make a strong effort to be a returning contact for operators who enjoy these modes. We also plan to greatly increase our contest participation. Due to cutbacks to our HF station over the years due to various complications, K4UCF has not been competitive in nearly any competition in the past few decades. We are working to change this and have already started to push the envelope by participating in weekly tests and, most recently, the IARU HF Championship to get our members contesting chops together and push K4UCF's name to other operators. We anticipate being able to rebuild our HF contest station to be comparable to our previous station from a few decades back, which will only multiply our success in getting K4UCF on the leaderboards again.

Third, we will focus on our involvement online. As a university organization, it is critical that we have a good internet presence. Part of this outreach focus will be covered by our informative materials, which will be publicly available online across multiple online platforms. We already have a great track record of maintaining a presence on programs like Discord and Instagram to inform our members and the general public of what the club is currently working on and taking part in. This presence will only expand through the inclusion of "short-form" content tutorials and updates about the contest and project participation of K4UCF. Additionally, our club posts all software projects publicly on our GitHub repo for public viewing and usage. We publicly post these projects both to fulfill our open access goal and keep the public updated on the status of our projects and allow them to contribute.

How does your project align with ARDC's vision and granting goals?

We believe that our project will align with the educational goals of ARDC by not only providing hams with convenient access to capable tools to use, but also capable tools to develop for. Our main motivation for trying to get capable HF setups put together is education. Most of our members have access to HF rigs and necessary equipment, either through direct ownership or lending from the club. However, many of them lack the convenience and necessary equipment to properly experience everything HF has to offer. Our project will provide a controlled environment where members will be able to operate without needing to deal with the hoops of setting up a digital interface, CW keyer, HF antenna, rotor, etc. While all of these skills are extremely important, once a ham has learned them, they only act as a roadblock to them being able to dig deeper into operating. Furthermore, these setups will contain all necessary tools for development. Many of our members would like to build antennas, design digital mode software, use experimental digital modes, and test experimental logging software. However, these aforementioned roadblocks get in the way.

Who will carry out your project?

The project will be carried out by KG4YDW, KN6ULR, N5EEU and KQ4VQC.

How does your project fulfill ARDC's open access goal?

In addition to publishing all of our educational materials under the CC BY license, unless objected to by ARDC, and all of our existing software projects being licensed as "FOSS", we will be making a strong effort to make sure we prioritize the usage of "free and open source software" for all of our operations. The main roadblock to adopting these programs is the lack of users, documentation, and development. We anticipate that, through making a strong focus on exclusively using "FOSS" and documenting our knowledge, we will contribute to the popularity and development of such software. Furthermore, our project will utilize "FOSS" in all of our guides to further abolish the barrier for entry with these programs and encourage hams to adopt such software.

How do we get the money?

UCF Foundation

• EIN is 59-3086453

• Methodology is they get paid, equipment is bought on our behalf